A-Listers and Their Fans: Bringing Down the House on Broadway

New Audiences Have Sparked New Security Measures

Broadway increasingly relies on celebrity casting, but this year, with Hugh Jackman, Emma Stone, James Franco and other A-listers on stage, theaters have been spending ever more time cracking down on shutterbugs, hecklers and the throngs of fans at the stage door.

The scrums that are now nightly, traffic-blocking headaches for security and police “only used to happen with, say, Burton and Taylor,” said the longtime theater director Gregory Mosher.